The U.S. has already made it difficult for countries to dealing with Iran’s Central Bank, and the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would declare the Iranian energy

sector a “zone of proliferation concern” that

would strangle Teheran’s ability collect payments

for its oil exports. Other proposals would

essentially make it impossible to do business with

Iran’s banks. Any country that dared to do so

would find itself unable to conduct virtually any

kind of international banking.

If the blizzard of legislation does pass, “This would be a

significant ratcheting-up of the economic war

against Iran,” Mark Dubowitz told the Financial

Times. Dubowitz is executive director of the

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who has

lobbied for a series of economic assaults against

the Palestinians, China, and Hezbollah.

But the “war” has already gone far beyond the economic

sphere. In the past two years, five Iranian nuclear

scientists have been assassinated. The hits have

been widely attributed to the Israeli intelligence

service, Mossad, and the People’s Mujahidin of

Iran (MEK), an organization the U.S. designates as

“terrorist.” Last year a massive explosion

rocked the Bid Ganeh military base near Teheran,

killing 17 people, including the founder of Iran’s

missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam.

According to Israeli media, the camp was sabotaged

by the MEK working with Mossad.

Deadly attacks directed at Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have been tied to Jundallah, a Sunni group with ties to U.S.

and Israel intelligence. It is no secret—indeed,

President Obama openly admitted it—that under the

codename “Olympic Games,” the U.S. has been

waging cyber war against Iran. The Stuxnet virus

shut down a considerable portion of Iran’s nuclear

program, although it also infected infrastructure

activities, including power plants, oil rigs, and

water supplies. The virus was designed to attack

systems made by the German company Siemens and has

apparently spread to China, Pakistan and Indonesia.

The U.S. is also suspected of being behind the Flame

virus, spyware able to record keystrokes, eavesdrop

on conversations near an infected computer, and tap

into screen images. Besides Iran, Flame has been

found in computers in the Palestinian West Bank,

Lebanon, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Hong Kong, and

the United Arab Emirates. Because “malware”

seeks out undefended computers no matter where they

are, it has a habit of spreading beyond its initial

target. Most of the media is focused on whether the

failure of the talks will lead to an Israeli or

American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and

there is certainly considerable smoke out there.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and

Defense Minister Ehud Barak have been threatening to

attack Iran for the past two years. According to

Gideon Rachman, a leading columnist for the

Financial Times, some Israeli officials have told

him Tel Aviv will attack sometime this summer or

early fall. One source told him “Israel will wait

until September or October because the weather is

better and it’s closer to the US elections.”

But the Independent’s (UK) Patrick Cockburn, one of

the more reliable analysts on the Middle East,

thinks the Israeli threats are “the bluff of the

century.” Cockburn argues that there is simply no

reason for Tel Aviv to go to war, since the Iranian

economy is being effectively strangled by the

sanctions. But the saber rattling is useful because

it scares the EU into toughing up the siege of

Teheran, while also shifting the Palestinian issue

to a back burner. There are serious divisions within

Israel on whether to go to war, with the Israeli

intelligence and military generally opposed. The

latter’s reasons are simple: militarily Tel Aviv

couldn’t pull it off, and politically an attack

would garner worldwide sympathy for Iran.

Recent statements downgrading the threat of Iran by Israeli

Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz suggest the

Netanyahu government is finally feeling the pressure

from divisions within its own ranks and may be

backing off from a military confrontation.

And the US? According to Paul Rogers, a Department of Peace

Studies professor at Bradford University and

OpenDemocracy’s international security editor, the

Pentagon has drawn up plans for a concentrated

attack on Iran’s nuclear industry, using a

combination of bombers and cruise missiles. The U.S.

recently beefed up its military footprint in the

region. But while the possibility of such an attack

is real—especially if congressional hawks get

their way—the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence

establishment are hardly enthusiastic about it. And

in any case, the US is carpet-bombing Iran’s

economy without firing a shot or sending air crews

into harm’s way.

While Iran is generally depicted as the recalcitrant party in the current nuclear talks, it has already compromised, even agreeing to ship some of its enriched uranium out of the country and to guarantee the International Atomic Energy